


I Feel Love

by zombieforrent



Series: After the world, the pale -- after the pale the world again. [1]
Category: Disco Elysium (Video Game)
Genre: Adult Content, Alcohol Abuse/Alcoholism, Drama, Drug Use, M/M, Mental Health Issues, Romance, Slow Burn, Violence
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2021-03-14
Updated: 2021-03-14
Packaged: 2021-03-22 01:21:54
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,970
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/30030873
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/zombieforrent/pseuds/zombieforrent
Summary: The tribunal is over, the murder solved. The case; wrapped tight in a neat little package, while Martinaise counts its dead. To whom the district belongs is no longer in question, having taken it so graciously into your own capable hands. You know what comes next. Are you prepared to deal with the consequences of the choices you've made?(the early days of a long fic, rated & tagged for future chapters, characters will be added as I go)
Relationships: Harry Du Bois/Kim Kitsuragi
Series: After the world, the pale -- after the pale the world again. [1]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/2209200
Comments: 2
Kudos: 11





	I Feel Love

PROLOGUE

_After life, death -- after death, life again._

  
  
Your chair screeches out from under you, when finally you push up from your desk; violently disrupting the settled quiet of the empty floor. Yet another scratch, digging further through the varnish layers of long-neglected herringbone parquet, greying, wearing away, from the years you’ve spent worrying at this very spot.

The full extent of the room is obscured by darkness, but the silence assures you that you are alone here. The other lights which run along the station’s ceiling have long since been clonked out by their grimey pull-cords. You mustn’t have heard them.

PERCEPTION (SOUND) [Medium:Success] - You didn’t.

The tall, sprawling space is more usually filled with the calming drone of friendly chatter. Ringing telephones, sometimes hushed, serious voices. A deep slap on a wool-wrapped back, the splash of coffee on desktop leather.

Arranged haphazardly, through necessity, some desks sit perpendicular to one another, in clusters, and others more separately. There are corrugated glass dividers, framed in the same dark-stained wood from which the desks are built. Dividers in name, mostly, not so tall as to prevent peeking above them to make faces at your neighbours, or throw things, while important phonecalls are taking place.

Mementos litter some; family photographs, slogan-bearing coffee cups. Relevant case information; others, not a little performatively. At each desk, a heavy black plastic telephone and an Emeralite lamp. The warm green glow was once thought to encourage focus, energy, positivity. No such connotations have survived their years of grateful service in this building.

Everything is covered in a fine layer of clutter; an unnerving shadow play staged from every direction. Certainly at least one coat on a hat stand is emanating ill-intent, but the rest are merely misunderstood.

Filing cabinet islands are moored about the gloom sporadically, disorganised papers tower in intimidating stacks atop each one. There are plan chests at the far end, by the entrance to the floor, for storing larger materials, like blueprints, and once and always useless as-builts. A line of private phone booths curve around the opposite far wall like confessionals, and windows line the space between.

It could be very bright in here, when it isn’t winter, you think. The single glazing forbids any real attempt to heat the room. The windows, painted shut, then painted again, and again, likely bake the inhabitants in summer.

PERCEPTION (TASTE) [Easy:Success] - Bacon’s *much* better fried.

Only the few fluorescents above you still emit that faintly menacing chartreuse, and that certainly menacing buzz, which on your worse days sounds like it might be _too_ loud. Ominously loud. Reaching the end of their useful life; preparing at any moment to choose to end their suffering with a lightning crack; in a rain of glass shards, and a cloud of heavy metals.

HALF LIGHT [Medium:Success] - Huck that hat stand at them like a *fucking javelin*.

INLAND EMPIRE [Medium:Success] - Check the weather report.

The tube lights sit in pairs, nestled beneath a reflecting roof to direct the light down to the factory floor. Imperilled, they hang from chains, clinging to perishing ceiling tiles, crumbling from their drop ceiling grid and blooming with fat little tea-stained boubas,

ENCYCLOPEDIA [Easy:Success] - The bouba/kiki effect, is a linguistic phenomenon first discovered by Oranje psychologists in ‘04.

YOU: I think I just misfired, phonetically. Description fatigue.

ENDURANCE [Easy:Success] - *Everything* fatigue. You’re dead on your feet, Harry.

ENCYCLOPEDIA: It refers to the tendency, for speakers from different languages, under most circumstances, to identify a simple rounded shape, as bouba, and a spiked shape, as kiki, when asked for a preference.

You run a hand through your hair and steady yourself against your desk, seeking out the rest of the merry band who usually occupy this space.

ELECTROCHEMISTRY [Easy:Success] - It’s been a little too long since last *you* were merry.

Only the low hang of stale smoke; overflowing ashtrays. You breathe it in deeply. A comforting smell.

Evidence.

Patting yourself down, you come upon the pack of Astras at the heart of your quest, in your breast pocket. Unfortunately, you’ve lost the fine motor control necessary to strike the first match for the last of your cigarettes.

ENCYCLOPEDIA: It appears to indicate that language operates, to some degree, ideaesthetically.

YOU: Why would you think I know what that-

HAND / EYE COORDINATION [Legendary: Failure]

You snap your second match in two. You sigh and give in.

You look at your desk with a similar defeat. Papers, scattered. Folders; card softened through handling, fine little canyons streak through the edges, fraying where the folds are made, revealing the pale fibres trying still to hold them together.

Some notes are yellowed with evidence of moisture, some with age. Years have passed since these cases were opened, decades, since some of their events occurred. Since the death mask of disintegrating photographs captured whatever scene lurks under a rusted bulldog clip.

Your hands are shaking. You realise that without a drink you won’t be able to sleep. Withdrawals are sweeping in like a rising tide. You look again at your desk.

INLAND EMPIRE [Hard:Success] - Sleep eluded you long before you started to shake.

You gather up the few things you might need between now and next you make it in. You pull on the cord for the overhead lights and the little indicator flips from on to off. The sweet expectation of relief from the buzzing doesn’t come.

The echo from the door slamming shut on the empty floor follows you down the precast concrete stairs, and you apologise to the silence. The mechanical door closer, specifically designed to soften the blow, broken by one too many overzealous overrulings, starts at the sound.

DRAMA [Easy:Success] – Would you have it any other way, Sire?

A light snow has fallen since the last person left, though not a flurry now. It seems almost a shame to disturb it. Dusting Jamrock like a fine dessert, you pause in the shelter of the entrance. The ground takes pity on you and offers you passage. You head home.

The cold is settled and uneventful as you approach Martinaise, Spring is taking hold further south but it’s yet to reach you here.

Looking for it, you pass the Kineema on the way in, still ticking over. You reach to press your hand on the still-warm hood, but choose not to. The Lieutenant will absolutely run your prints. 

The Whirling-in-Rags too, is dark, when you enter; a few emergency lights, red glowing dots of appliances on stand-by. You tiptoe across the tile in hopes of dampening the clack-clack of your shoes crossing the cafeteria.

You hold onto the handrail for dear life as you drag yourself up to the second floor, an increasingly dead weight with every step.

You reach Kim’s door and hover your hand over it. You clench and unclench your fist, the motion coming uneasily. You stare at your hand. It’s listening less to you, the beginnings of a tremor robbing you of some of your control. Mottled blues ripple along the surface of your palm. The heat is draining from your extremities, rising up the back of your neck and pooling about your shoulders like a cowl.

KIM KITSURAGI – “Detective?”

You turn to see Kim quietly shut the balcony door behind him. He assesses your pose with an odd glance and you release your hand from its line of silent questioning. He retrieves his cigarettes and matchbook from the liner pocket of his jacket, holding them up in offer with a small flick of the wrist.

You nod and head out to the balcony together. The night is cold, but the sea breeze carries with it some warmth, deep water slowly charged by the sun during the day. You lean heavily on the railing and rub your hands together, the soft, papery friction, the only sound until Kim strikes his match.

You look up to him, lit with the flickering orange light. Kim hands you a smoke, with a gloved hand. You take it to your lips and he shields the flame instinctively from the wind. He lights yours first, and then his own. Shaking out the match and casting it into the great beyond, his face now only briefly glows red with every draw of his cigarette.

YOU – “Gloves. There’s an idea.”

KIM KITSURAGI – “Have you considered what to wear tomorrow?”

He doesn’t think what you’re wearing now would be suitable. He is correct, of course.

KIM KITSURAGI – “The dress uniform has gloves. White, I believe. Had you any idea where it might be.”

You don’t. You look to the heavens for an inkling, but find nothing but a sea of black, permeated by the faint glow of innumerable distant stars, each cruelly disinclined to enlighten you on the matter.

KIM KITSURAGI – “I gather you do not.” He sighs.

It’s not a disappointed sigh, but the fatigued expectation running through it fills you with the feeling that you have, nonetheless, disappointed him. “We’ll have some time before we leave in the morning.”

YOU – “I have the jacket.”

Curled in the bottom-most drawer of your desk, once you held it aloft with delight, asking from whom you’d taken it. The perplexed looks of your colleagues mentally retracted your statement, as you turned it over in your hands and encountered that familiar, identifying strip.

KIM KITSURAGI – “Well, that’s something.” He smiles, an impossibly reassuring smile for the dead of night.

You let a little time pass between you. An engine rumbles deeply into life, somewhere in the far, far distance. A cat jumps from one ledge to another with a light thud. Just less than dead.

KIM KITSURAGI – “Is there a reason you came home so late?”

YOU – “I wasn’t really paying attention.”

It's the truth. Somewhat.

KIM KITSURAGI – “Hm.” If he is concerned he doesn’t betray it, though it’s safe to assume he isn’t _not_ concerned.

YOU – “Just trying to finish things out.”

KIM KITSURAGI – “Wrap things up.” He nods. “I understand.” He does. Then he laughs, a brief laugh. It isn’t a harsh laugh, but there’s an edge to it. “I suppose, so was I.”

YOU – “So is everything…?“

KIM KITSURAGI – “Good to go.” You nod. “Have you found anyone to come?”

You shake your head and look away. You hadn’t thought it was likely, but since when has that stopped you?

YOU – “Us.”

Kim nods, looking out toward the sea, to what, if anything, you don't know. The wind picks up a little, just enough, to loosen from his carefully slicked hair, a few strays. He pays them no mind. 

YOU - “So when is it?”

KIM KITSURAGI – “11am.”

YOU – “11am.”  
  
KIM KITSURAGI – “We’ll leave at nine. To find your things.” You nod. He takes a moment before he continues. “Have you checked your apartment?”

You shake your head and run a hand through your hair instinctively. You turn and lean back against the rail. You look to the sky, another habit. You sigh and close your eyes.

SHIVERS [Hard:Success] – Somewhere deep in the bowels of Jamrock, a dense little apartment with torn floral wallpaper hasn’t taken a breath in weeks. Weak wooden siding is warping off its fixtures. A matted shag carpet spreads across the floor like a rash.

You look to Kim.

YOU – “Not yet.”

He understands.

KIM KITSURAGI – “We can request a uniform from the department. Your old one mightn’t fit, even should we find it.”

YOU – “Thanks Kim.”

KIM KITSURAGI – “Of course.”

He stubs out his cigarette and drops it into a waiting bucket, left for you by Garte, no doubt sick of sweeping your jetsam from the streets.

YOU – “9am.”

KIM KITSURAGI – “9am.” He turns to leave. “Oh and, detective?” He raises an eyebrow. “Do not, under any circumstance, touch the Kineema without my presence.”

**Author's Note:**

> Good morrow, fellow Disco Elysium likers. 
> 
> This is going to be a long fic and I am a *very* slow writer, so please bear that in mind when choosing to follow this along as I go! This will be a very slow burn and won't become explicit for some time, but I wanted to tag it this way so that people who wanted to avoid sexual and adult themes would be able to do so before getting invested!
> 
> This will also be part of a duology which will release concurrently.
> 
> I have a disco twitter @not_very_disco & tumblr @thats_not_very_disco_of_you because I just love this game. so much.


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